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    MBP win 7 battery life 13" vs 15"

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by nevide, Jul 4, 2010.

  1. nevide

    nevide Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi everyone. Long time reader but new at posting so bear with me ^_^

    First of all, I am currently using an acer 1810T. While this machine is just OK for daily office work, I find it truly lacking when running lightroom or photoshop. I am currently looking for a "reasonably priced" notebook that has a photographer friendly display. From my research, I came down to MBP 13, MBP 15, and the vaio Z. I decided against the vaio Z for budget reasons. for a 13 incher the Z is hella expensive.

    I would really like to know which MBP will have a better battery life when running Win7? Not that I don't want MacOS, it's just that I need windows for work since many of the accounting suites I use are windows only. I heard that running windows on MBPs severely reduces the battery life? And I also read somewhere that the dual graphics on the 15 are always drawing power when running windows so the battery life on the 15 is even worse than the 13?


    The types of programs i normally use are in order of frequency: Web browser XD, MS Office, Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5, some windows only accounting software, Nikon Capture NX, light MMO games (dragonica, maple story, WCIII, and the likes).

    So, the priority of importance in a notebook and why I'm leaning towards MBPs in order of importance are: Great screen with full sRGB gamut or close to it, can run windows, Good size and fast HDD, good battery life (for client meetings that goes on and on), comfortable input devices (keys and pads), kinda portable (anything 15" and under will do), processing power and just enough graphics for light gaming.

    If any of you can enlighten me on another notebook choice I would be very happy to reconsider.
     
  2. Nick

    Nick Professor Carnista

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    Oops! double post
     
  3. Nick

    Nick Professor Carnista

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    13>15. 13 gets better battery life than 15. I think my Macbook Pro 13 got 3-3.5 hours of battery life in Windows 7. Macbook Pro 15 probably gets 2.5-3 hours.
     
  4. E30kid

    E30kid Notebook Deity

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    Run 7 in parallels on the 15 if you want decent battery life from it. If Parallels enables the GPU, just get the 13.

    If you don't need the screen space or the GPU of the 15, just go with the 13.